Bitcoin Blog a1

Monday, September 11, 2017

Ethereum and Eternium

This is a post I meant to publish a while ago about Ethereum. On a slightly related note, I was browsing the play store recently and saw an app that I thought was called Ethereum. I assumed it was an Ethereum wallet and since I’m studying Ethereum, I thought it would be a good idea to check it out. Well, the app was actually called Eternium, and it is actually a Diablo 2 style game. It is pretty decent. Anyways, here is my post of Ethereum.

New cryptos are a dime a dozen and a new currency generally isn’t particularly noteworthy. But sometimes a new currency gets so much attention it warrants my attention. And ETH is now one of those currencies. ETH is most noteworthy due to contracts. Contracts can be set up and executed when particular conditions are met. So a deal between two individuals can be enforced using the ETH blockchain.

In recent news, the price of ETH has raised dramatically. In addition, there is a lot of GPU miners of ETH. This demand seems to be so high, that many AMD graphics cards are out of stock. At this time, AMD cards are preferable for this kind of mining (note, this isn’t a SHA 256 encryption like bitcoin, which is best done with a ASIC).

Another thing to be aware of is that ETH is not the same as ETC. ETC is branded as Ethereum Classic. It is a hardfork from ETH (or ETH is a hardfork form ETC perhaps is a better way to say it). To explain a bit, a hardfork is essentially a point where two currencies are formed out of one. One coin follows a new, different protocol from the other. Up to this point, the blockchains are the same for the two coins, but after a hard fork, this is no longer the case. To my understanding, a hacker stole 50 million worth of ETH. The devs were able to stop this, the money was under restriction for 28 days, by altering the coins code. Some 90% of nodes supported the change. Those that didn’t became ETC. There also seems to be some distrust for ETC. Then again, people using ETC seem to distrust ETH. The point is, be aware of what you are getting into, if you want to get into ETC, just know it's not ETH.

Over the next few weeks I will try to investigate ETH more and show how to get started with it.